Butch Otter

The battle over an obscure policy directive by Interior Secretary Salazar over BLM lands blew up this week, with Governor Otter testifying before the U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources, and Rep. Raul Labrador introducing his very first piece of legislation. The “wild lands” policy, announced in December, would simply have BLM consider wilderness values [...]

For all of our friends and members who wrote a letter, sent an email, or signed a petition, here’s some moderately good news from Boise. Even though, by all accounts, it is a tough budget year for Idaho, Governor Otter has allocated full funding in his budget for water quality monitoring. Our friends at Idaho [...]

On Monday, according to Idaho Reporter, Gov. Butch Otter will be in Denver to talk wolves with Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and the Governors of Wyoming and Montana. A legal morass and election-year political grandstanding have made a mess of wolf management in the northern Rockies, and it certainly needs some high-level discussion. It isn't [...]

As you probably know, we've been rallying support for water quality monitoring for weeks now. We have been calling on Gov. Otter to restore funding to the budget to perform one of the basic functions under the Clean Water Act, something the Governor and legislature have declined to fund for the past two years. Of [...]

Leave it to Butch Otter to actually follow through on what should have been an empty threat. Today, Butch Otter decided to end Idaho's role in wolf management. For the time being, at least. Unless it's a purely political move, the directive is completely baffling, no matter which side of the debate you're on. Even the [...]

We had some interesting discussions yesterday about our blog posting about Idaho’s water monitoring meltdown. Recall that we wrote: We know that Idahoans care deeply about water quality. The failure of DEQ to accomplish the very basic minimum requirements of the Clean Water Act should be unacceptable. The legislature, which has zeroed the water monitoring [...]

Our great friend and office neighbor Mary Lou Reed invited us to a last minute lunch today with Keith Allred, candidate for Idaho Governor. Allred, who was in the area for a number of events, evidently hadn’t completely filled his calendar, so a small group of “Friends of Mary Lou” got an invitation to have [...]

Last night, Senator Crapo and Governor Otter hosted another round of opposition to the EPA’s proposed cleanup plan for the Silver Valley. Mostly a rerun of last week’s hearing, Hecla Mining employees, local citizens, and local politicians lined up for 90 seconds at the microphone. The same complaints – that the cleanup will [...]

H.L. Mencken once noted that "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." And with a "listening session" with Senator Crapo and Governor Otter scheduled Monday evening in Kellogg, we're concerned for the EPA's new cleanup plan for the Silver Valley. In a [...]

The long-awaited Endangered Species Act decision on wolves from U.S. District Judge Molloy in Missoula was released yesterday. The reaction was immediate and occasionally over the top: Wolves go back on the list. -- Missoulan (Note: a copy of the actual opinion is linked from this article) Idaho Fish and Game is "very disappointed." -- [...]